Patients will be given the right to choose their GPs under government reforms allowing people in deprived areas to sign up with surgeries in more affluent areas.

In a move that will be nervously received by doctors, the health secretary Andy Burnham today announced that fixed "practice boundaries" will be abolished within the next year.

The Tories, who are committed to removing the boundaries, have described them as "a solid wall of defence against real choice".

Under current rules patients can only sign up with a GP within defined boundaries close to their home. This means that less well-off patients are forced to sign up with surgeries in deprived areas, and are barred from using doctors in more affluent areas unless they live in a mixed-income area. It also means that people cannot join GP surgeries near their offices.

In a speech to the King's Fund thinktank, Burnham said: "In this day and age, I can see no reason why patients should not be able to choose the GP practice they want. Many of us lead hectic lives and health services should be there to make things easier."

Laurence Buckman, chairman of the British Medical Association's GPs committee, said: "We are open to discussing ways of improving choice for patients, and most GPs would be comfortable with flexible boundaries. However, major logistical barriers would need to be overcome. Home visits with a GP a long way away could be costly for the NHS to fund.

"Practices in rural and suburban areas could lose significant numbers of young, healthy, patients, destabilising their funding and threatening their viability.

"Meanwhile, city centre practices would be inundated with requests for appointments at lunchtime and [in the] evenings, which would effectively limit patient choice."

In his speech Burnham insisted that Labour is best-placed to champion the next stage of NHS reform, an argument central to the general election drive as ministers challenge the widespread assumption that the government has run out of ideas.

"For our part, we want to do more than bank the progress of recent years," he said.

"I want to see patient satisfaction measured service by service ... Making this information readily available will empower patients and put commissioners on the spot."

The impact of abolishing practice boundaries within the next year will be far-reaching and the change is clearly intended to use competition within the NHS to drive up the quality of service.

The potential cost of patients deserting to rival practices is large, as GPs are paid according to the services they provide.

Andrew Lansley, the shadow health secretary, criticised the government for taking so long to come round to the idea of abolishing boundaries. "This is too little, too late from a Labour government which is lamely following where the Conservatives lead," he said.

"The only party that can deliver the real change that our NHS needs is the Conservatives, which is why we need to have a general election now, not in nine months."